The handing over of the MAS flight MH17's black boxes to Malaysian investigators were carried out without any conditions set by the pro-Russia separatists who are also alleged to have fired the missile which brought down the plane in eastern Ukraine. - Reuters pic, July 23, 2014.

There was no separate deal with pro-Russia separatist leader Alexander Borodai for Malaysia to secure the black box, the return of the remains of those on board Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 as well as safe access to the crash site, Putrajaya said today.

Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib announced the breakthrough on Monday night with the Ukrainian separatists, who have since handed over the black boxes and remains of most of the 298 people on board the Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 shot down on July 17.

Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said today all parties understood the importance of the matter to both Malaysia and the world.

SEPANG: Families of the deceased crew members on board the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 will receive compensation from the Social Security Organisation (Socso) soon.

Human Resources Minister Datuk Seri Richard Riot Jaem said the next-of-kin of the 15 crew members will receive a one-off funeral management payout of RM1,500 and a minimum monthly invalidity pension of RM475.

There is ‘extraordinary circumstantial evidence’ that Ukrainian pro-Russian rebels are behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine, says the United States. – Reuters pic, July 21, 2014.

United States Secretary of State John Kerry laid out "extraordinary circumstantial evidence" yesterday that Ukrainian pro-Russian rebels were behind the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, hit by weapons obtained from Russia.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Barack Obama has seized on the shooting down of the Malaysian passenger jet to redouble international pressure on Russia over its support for Ukrainian separatists, calling it a “wake-up call” for Europe.

The US president claimed the incident – coming less than 24 hours after the US announced a third wave of economic sanctions against Russia – demonstrated the risks of supplying heavy weapons and support to the rebels and how the impact was “not going to be localised”.

David Cameron has said that those responsible for the "absolutely shocking" shooting down of the Malysia Airlines jet over Ukraine "must be held to account".

Speaking after a meeting of the government's emergency Cobra committee, the prime minister also insisted it was too early to know for certain exactly who was to blame for the attack that has killed almost 300 passengers.

Pieces of wreckage of the Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 a day after it crashed in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. Photograph: Dominique Faget/AFP/Getty Images

Two of the 28 Australians killed when MH17 was shot down over Ukraine were members of a family who lost two other relatives when MalaysiaAirlines flight MH370 disappeared in March, it has emerged.

Kaylene Mann, from Queensland, lost her brother and sister-in-law, Rod and Mary Burrows, when the plane vanished after diverting from its Beijing to Kuala Lumpur route. On Friday, she learned her stepdaughter, Maree Rizk, and Rizk's husband, Albert – both estate agents – had been on board the flight downed over Ukraine. "It's just ripped our guts again," Mann's brother, Greg Burrows, told reporters.

MELBOURNE: As many as 100 passengers on the Malaysian airliner that crashed in eastern Ukraine on Thursday were headed to a major international AIDS conference in Melbourne, the Australian government said on Friday.Foreign Minister Julie Bishop confirmed that at least 27 Australians were among the 298 passengers and crew on the flight that the United States says was brought down by a surface-to-air missile.“A number of people who were traveling to Malaysia for an international AIDS conference were also on board,” Bishop told reporters.

What is the EPF/KWSP?

The Employees Provident Fund Act 1991 (Act 452) provides retirement benefits for members of the EPF through management of their savings contributions. The EPF (also called the KWSP) is a social security institution which administers their members retirement fund using a defined contribution plan. This is different from a government pension which is a defined benefit retirement plan.

Your EPF Account is where all your monthly contributions and that from your employer are credited into.

Effective 1 January 2007, the Account was divided into two parts, namely Account I and Account II.

Contributions received on your behalf from your employer will be credited into the two accounts according to the following percentages:

(Reuters) - A Malaysian airliner was shot down over eastern Ukraine by pro-Russian militants on Thursday, killing all 295 people aboard, a Ukrainian interior ministry official said.

Raising the stakes in the East-West showdown between Kiev and Moscow, the official blamed "terrorists" using a ground-to-air missile and Ukraine's prime minister called the downing of the flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur a "catastrophe".

A Reuters correspondent saw burning wreckage and bodies on the ground at the village of Grabovo, about 40 km (25 miles) from the Russian border in an area where pro-Russian rebels have been active and have claimed to have shot down other aircraft.

The Boeing 777 came down near the city of Donetsk, stronghold of pro-Russian rebels, interior ministry official Anton Gerashchenko said on Facebook, adding it was "shot down with a Buk anti-aircraft system by terrorists" - the term the Kiev government uses for militants seeking to unite eastern Ukraine with Russia. The dead were 280 passengers and 15 crew.

Malaysia Airlines said on its Twitter feed it had lost contact with its flight MH-17 from Amsterdam. "The last known position was over Ukrainian air space," it said.

A rebel leader said Ukrainian forces shot the airliner down. Ukrainian official said their military was not involved.

Interfax-Ukraine quoted another Ukrainian official as saying the plane disappeared from radar when it was flying at 10,000 metres (33,000 feet), a typical cruising altitude for airliners.

Ukraine has accused Russia of taking an active role in the four-month-old conflict in recent days and accused it earlier on Thursday of shooting down a Ukrainian Sukhoi Su-25 fighter jet - an accusation that Moscow denied.

The military commander of the rebels, a Russian named Igor Strelkov, had written on his social media page shortly before the report of the airliner being downed that his forces had brought down an Antonov An-26 in the same area. It is a turboprop transport plane of a type used by Ukraine's forces.

The Interfax news agency said the plane came down 50 km short of entering Russian airspace.

It "began to drop, afterwards it was found burning on the ground on Ukrainian territory," an unnamed
source said.

The plane appeared to have come down in a region of military action where Ukrainian government
forces are battling pro-Russian separatists.

A separate unnamed source in the Ukrainian security apparatus, quoted by Interfax, said the plane disappeared from radar at a height of 10,000 metres after which it came down near the town of
Shakhtyorsk

"A Boeing Malaysian Airlines that was flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur began to descend about 50km before entering Russian airspace, and was subsequently found burning on the ground in Ukraine," an aviation source told Interfax.

Thursday, July 17, 2014

THE Committee of Inquiry has reported that worker dissatisfaction was not the cause of the Little India riot. However, it did not rule out the possibility of a future riot caused by work or housing woes ("Give foreign workers a fair deal"; July 6).

Even if only a minority of the more than 770,000 foreign workers here are unhappy and trigger a similar incident, it will have a profound impact on law and order here and affect Singapore's reputation as a safe place to live.

Wednesday, July 16, 2014

Unless the MAS unions are willing to work with the airline to get over its financial woes, nothing is going to change, say economists

KUALA LUMPUR: Two economists have advised employees of Malaysia Airlines System (MAS) to get their priorities right to enable the national airline to survive these turbulent times.

Universiti Utara Malaysia’s Prof. Dr. Amir Hussin Baharudin said it would not serve any purpose for the unions to demand a meeting with the Prime Minister without any concrete plans to turn around the airline which itself is overstaffed.

Monday, July 14, 2014

The Penang state government is going to develop policies to ban foreign workers from working as main cooks in hawker food businesses to preserve the authenticity of local hawker cuisine. Once the ban is implemented, hawker licences of violators might be revoked.

Hawker food and heritage sites are Penang's main selling points to attract tourists and thus, they should be preserved and protected. In fact, having foreign workers as main cooks is not a problem faced only by Penang, but also other states, particularly big cities like Kuala Lumpur, where eight out of 10 cooks in hawker stalls are now foreign workers. If the government still takes no appropriate actions to curb the problem and hawker owners still do not face it seriously, hawker food business might soon face self-destruction. Once traditional cuisine losses its authenticity, what else is left in Malaysia's traditional culture?

As many enjoy the World Cup games in Sao Paolo, most remain oblivious to the abusive working conditions of labourers.

Many labourers migrated from rural areas to Sao Paolo looking for work and financial opportunity [Getty Images]

As hundreds of thousands of football fans enjoy the beautiful games in Sao Paulo, many rural migrants drawn to Brazil’s commercial capital to build stadiums and other infrastructure projects say their lives have been anything but pretty in the lead-up to the mega-event. In fact, many labourers who worked on construction projects ahead of the World Cup say they experienced rights abuses, including long hours and dangerous conditions.Flavio, who hails from the Alagoas region in northeastern Brazil and didn’t want his real name published, said weeks of carrying 50kg bags of concrete and working at heights of 50 meters was too much for some workers.

Sunday, July 13, 2014

A multinational electronics company has denied the accusation that it breached the law by utilising outsourcing agents to employ foreign workers.

However, according to the Malaysian Trades Union Congress (MTUC), passports of foreign workers employed by the said company were being held by the outsourcing agents, which led to the arrest of one such worker.

In making the claim, MTUC Selangor division chairperson Wan Noorul Azhar Mohd Hanafiah (left) told Malaysiakini that although working contracts are from the company, workers’ affairs are handed to the agents to be handled.

The situation involves 200 foreign workers, a majority of them from countries such as Nepal, Myanmar and Indonesia.

“Since they don’t hold their passports, these workers are at a high risk of getting caught by the police.

“Currently, one has been caught and is still in the lock-up,” he said.